


Getting There the Hard Way

by miriad



Category: Long Time Gone - Dixie Chicks (Song)
Genre: Delia deserves nice things, Experimental Style, F/F, No Dialogue, POV Experimental, POV Second Person, handwaving the time period this is set in because reasons, ladies loving each other, sometimes you have to be dumb to be smart, well almost no dialogue lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 08:34:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16364492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miriad/pseuds/miriad
Summary: She’s always had standards. Why she was ever with you is beyond your comprehension, honestly.So, you leave. You take your savings, meager as they are, and you meander your way up towards Nashville, in the Ford, the ghost of Delia in the back, staring at you as you ride further and further away from what you think you hate, but which holds so many people you love.





	Getting There the Hard Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NYCScribbler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NYCScribbler/gifts).



> I loved the idea that the Dixie Chick's cover of _Long Time Gone_ wasn't a gender flip, and what that would mean about the characters in the story. I know the original ask was for more about Delia but this was what anted to come out of me. It's not quite what you asked for, NYCScribbler, but I hope you like it.
> 
> Thank you so, so much to [Deisderium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deisderium/pseuds/Deisderium), who did super fast beta work and some hand-holding for me. I appreciate your help so very much!
> 
> Note: This is marked "Explicit" but I don't know how explicit it really is. I just wasn't sure if Mature was strong enough, lol.

You can’t stand to stay in this little town, in this tired, small minded place, where just the thought of growing old there makes your skin crawl. Never mind that you like girls enough that you’re sure you’re gonna get dragged to some conversion camp or shot by somebody’s daddy when he catches you necking with his daughter in the barn.

 

You wear flannel and denim, like your brother, taking his second-hand boots for the look more than the fit, even though they’re only about a half size too big. You sister tried to pass on her dresses but you’d rather sleep outside with the skunks than wear a dress.

 

It’s not that you don’t like dresses. You like when other girls wear dresses. You like when Delia wears a dress. As long as you’ve known her, she’s never had one that’s fit just right. Always too long or too short, too loose or too tight, but never fitted properly.

 

You’d like to buy her a dress that’s made to fit her, specifically, one that hugs her curves perfectly. Mostly so you can take it off her, unwrap her like the gift she is. It makes you wet in uncomfortable places when you think about it too long.

 

Makes sense, her mama dying when her littlest brother was born and all, but nobody wanted to marry her daddy as he’s a right son of a bitch and who would willingly take that on after seeing what it’d done to Delia’s mama? Nobody, that’s who.

 

More accurate to say Delia, although that brings up uncomfortable thoughts about just how much her daddy’s started looking at her as a replacement for his wife, but you have to stop thinking about that or you’ll go crazy.

 

She’s never said anything, not when the two of you are up in the hayloft, necking behind the bales of hay, the air hot and sweet, sweat slicking the skin between her breasts and the stretch of your lower back that Delia likes to run her fingers down when the two of you are locked in an embrace.

 

She’s never said anything when you’ve got your mouth between her thighs in the backseat of the Ford you bought with the proceeds from the sale of your first 4-H steer, her skirt hiked up around her hips and your tongue twisting and working like you’re gonna die if you don’t give Delia the orgasm of her life.

 

The skin around your mouth and nose still smells like her, even after you use the baby wipes, and you put off taking a shower until the next morning so you can diddle yourself to the lingering smell and taste of her in the quiet of your own bedroom.

 

She does tell you about how tired she is, about how she has to take care of all her younger sisters and brothers, the youngest of which is still in diapers, and she’s just so over it. She’s not a mama and she’s not sure she ever wants to be at this point, all her mothering getting wrung out of her before she’s even eighteen.

So, when you decide that it’s time for you to hit the goddamn road, you ask her if she wants to tag along. Hell, it can’t be harder with two working women together, it could only be easier, but she tells you no. She looks at your face and without any expression at all, she tells you that she can’t leave, and that’s that.

 

She won’t even go on a farewell drive in the Ford. No matter how much you tempt her with memories of your tongue and lips, she’s adamant that she’s just fine, thank you very much.

 

Which, what the hell, you recall thinking at that point. How could she possibly turn down the offer to get the hell out of Dodge?

 

You’re tired of farm life. You’re tired of boll weevils and cutworms and black flies. You’re tired of carrying your brother’s weight now that he’s gone up north, to Indiana, and your sister’s, now that she’s off in nursing school, hopefully with a plan to get out and stay out, but you’re pretty sure that she’ll be back home as soon as the ink is dry on her diploma.

 

You go to church with your mama and daddy one last time, before you hit the road, and there’s Delia, playing that church piano, pounding away, and your stomach clenches, because you’ve never had an accompanist as smooth as Delia, as proficient, as ready to follow you no matter where you want to go. She’s a musical gift, but she doesn’t want to leave, and Delia doesn’t do anything, as far as you know, that she doesn’t want to do.

 

She sings with the choir, too, from her seat on the piano bench, and she sounds like an angel, at least to your ears. It makes you think about those nights in the back of the Ford, and your face warms. Your mama asks if you’re feeling alright, and if you need to step out for a bit of fresh air. You would, but you’d miss Delia, and you can’t, because you’re going to miss her so much when you leave, so you have to soak her in as much as you can.

 

Delia always tells you that you should be singing up with the choir, but you don’t really go in for all that church stuff. It makes you uncomfortable, especially with everything they say about gay people and burning in hell. You can’t abide with that, and you won’t sing with folks that do.

 

Delia doesn’t like it, either, but she can’t get out of it without issues with her daddy and her Aunt Helen, who looks like a bear in a wig, and is twice as fierce. It’s not a fight you want her to have, no matter how much you’d like her to stand up for herself, and for you.

 

At coffee fellowship, after the service, you take her a lemon cookie and a cup of sweet tea, and try to smooth things over, but she’s having none of it. Oh, she’ll take the cookie and the tea, because the girl is from a family of eight and she’s not one to pass up food, no m’am, but she’s not buying whatever it is you’re selling, and she won’t go on any kind of walk with you so you can give her a good-bye kiss.

 

She’s always had standards. Why she was ever with you is beyond your comprehension, honestly.

 

So, you leave. You take your savings, meager as they are, and you meander your way up towards Nashville, in the Ford, the ghost of Delia in the back, staring at you as you ride further and further away from what you think you hate, but which holds so many people you love.

 

You find a room at a flop house where they still have a shared bathroom for each floor, and you’re sure that the rats are paying rent based on the sheer number of them the landlord allows on the property.

 

The sheets are crunchy, so you take them to the laundromat with a handful of change you stole from your brother’s dresser top before you left (he’s in Indiana, what the hell will he care?) and you wash them and your favorite t-shirt, which happens to be a gift from Delia.

 

You feel better on the clean sheets, but not much, as you listen to people fuck on one side of you, and apparently fight to the death on the other. Every. Damn. Night.

 

You do the math, and even though this is the cheapest you can find and you’re doing your best to eat ramen cups and bananas, you aren’t going to be able to stay, not if your only job is busking, the only cash you’re bring in coming from the tip jar you set on the edge of your blanket, near your knee. You’re cute but not Delia cute, and you just don’t bring in the money that you’ve seen other musicians take in on the same streets.

 

It’s a real fight for those spots, too, and you don’t have the seniority or the weight to throw around to get the really nice ones. You’re stuck near the stairwell no one uses, except the bum that pisses there every afternoon at 3:05 sharp.

 

You give your notice and move out, packing your things back into your Ford, trying to find the cheapest parking lot that still has security and when that doesn’t pan out either, you look for the local parks that won’t make you move on after dusk.

 

You end up settling on a rest area just off the highway, which is a bit of a drive, but it’s not unusual to see people sleeping in their cars, and no one gets hassled there for the most part. You hear about crime, about criminals robbing travelers, and you’re glad that you packed your shotgun, even though you know better than to think that you’ll be fast enough to fight someone off if they wake you up from a dead sleep.

 

Not like you’ve actually hit a dead sleep in weeks, but, still. It’s the thought.

 

You try this system for a long while. You busk, you play your guitar, you sing, you set out your tip jar. You try to make friends and meet people, try to find out who knows who in the music industry and how you get your music and your talent in front of them.

 

It’s hard. You kind of hate it but it’s what you said you wanted, so you keep hammering away at it.

 

Despite not being the most femme of women, your style the same as your brothers and most of your clothes his hand-me-downs to boot, you have to fight off the hands of all sorts of people. Venue owners who are looking for a bit of quid pro quo, passers by who think that busker means homeless (okay, so you are technically homeless, but that was a choice, and whatever, that isn’t an excuse) and homeless means no one cares and they can just drag you off to have a bit of slap and tickle with you if they so choose.

 

You break more than one nose your first month in town, and certainly build yourself a reputation, but one that reads more as difficult instead of talented. You’re the kind of girl that causes trouble and doesn’t go with the flow, which really boils down to won’t fuck anyone just because they ask or because they need it to be transactional, and you’re starting to become a cynic. It hasn’t even been six months.

 

You miss home. You miss your mama’s cooking, you miss the smell of your daddy’s pipe and the way he’d always have a solution for your problems, even if you knew you’d never use it.

 

You miss Delia. You miss her like burning, your hands aching to hold her, your mouth desperate to kiss her face, her belly, her cunt. You pleasure yourself and pretend it’s her hands on you, playing your clit like she plays the piano, fingers deft and practiced. She knows you, knows all your buttons, and it aches when you come on your own fingers, on your dildo, instead of with her.

 

You don’t want to admit that perhaps this whole thing was a mistake.

 

It’s a huge fucking mistake.

 

You’re saved from having to make the decision yourself when you make your weekly call home and find out from your mama that Delia’s father was killed in a car accident. He was a shit, but there was an insurance policy, so there’s something to support all those kids.

 

Delia’s trying to take it all on herself, because of course she is. She couldn’t let her brothers and sisters go off to foster care and families that she doesn’t know, or God forbid, families she does know, and have that situation looking back at her in church every Sunday, her siblings looking up at her from the pews but as part of someone else’s family.

 

You know she can’t do this on her own. She can’t deal with Dylan, the little shit, and it’s only going to get worse as he hits the teen years. Then there’s the three littlest ones, all under seven, that would be a handful for two parents, let alone a single mama who’s actually their sister.

 

A part of you screams that this is just an excuse. That you’re looking for a reason to quit, to not put in the hard work, but after six months of waking up to the seatbelt buckle in your kidney, to the point that you’re sure when they cut you open to autopsy you, there will be an indent and the word ‘PRESS’ still visible in the organ, you’re tired.

 

You’re tired of the singing, the playing, the fighting to get in front of some other kid from the backwoods who has just as many songs and just as much talent, but maybe not as much drive.

 

It’s a fifteen hour drive to get back home, and you know that you can’t do it tonight, you just can’t, but you know you’re going to leave in the morning. It has to happen.

 

Delia needs you.

 

You get up early and use some of the change from your tip jar to buy a large cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich at the truck stop that’s a few miles off the freeway, but the waitress likes you and lets you flirt your way into free food fairly often.

 

You take the time to say goodbye so she doesn’t worry, and to get it out of your system, since it’s pretty clear that you’ve decided Delia’s your person, you can’t just turn that charm on whomever. It’s reserved for someone specific. Special.

 

Delia.

 

The drive takes longer than fifteen hours. There’s new construction and detours, accidents, and you have to stop and take a nap at one point because sleeping in your car isn’t conducive to a good night’s sleep, long term, you’ve got serious sleep deprivation.

 

But by the time you hit the county line, you’re awake and buzzing, fingers tapping on the wheel along with the radio, old Hank singing about being so lonesome he could cry, and you realize that you’ve been there for the past six months, and you let a few tears out because you can’t hold them back any longer. You pull over to let it all out, because you can’t see where you’re going and you’re going to kill someone this way, but it feels good to finally open that valve.

 

You’re back under control when you pull down the long drive to Delia’s farm, the house hidden behind a copse of trees older than the state’s been in the Union. You park by the barn and turn the key in the ignition.

 

You can hear kids shouting at each other over the ticking of the Ford’s engine and you take a deep breath, because you weren’t really the person that wanted to have kids, but you’re about to walk into a situation where you’re going to get a whole gaggle of them all at once. You know you’d better be ready, or at least shored up, before you make your offer to help or you’re just going to make it worse.

 

You can’t be the one to make it worse. Delia would kill you and you’d help her do it.

 

You realize you need to pee, so, fuck it, time to get out and see if Delia is as interested in letting you try to make up leaving her as you are interested in building something new and strong with her.

 

Your boots crunch across the dirt and gravel, and you look at your feet because you left your sunglasses in the car and the sun is bright and glaring in your eyes, so you miss when Delia comes out of the house, but you don’t miss when she shouts your name and comes running.

 

You stop to wait for her, and you catch her as she jumps towards you, both of you going for the deep hug. She pulls away first then punches you, right in the mouth. While you’re standing there, hand up to your now-swelling lip, she leans forward and kisses the corner of your mouth, telling you to get inside, there are potatoes that need peeling.

 

Later that night, you’re both in the back of the Ford, because Delia’s got two kids sleeping with her in her bed and she hasn’t gotten to the point where she’s been able to clean out her parent’s room and take over the king bed. That room also has a door that locks, which means getting it cleaned out is first on your To Do list.

 

She let you kiss her in the stairwell and then it snowballed into actual lovemaking in the back of your car. Where you ate her out for what felt like hours, but good hours, the kind of sex that you talk about years later because it can’t be repeated, even though your split lip is burning like nobody’s business. But you deserve it, so you deal with it and make her happy.

 

She comes on your mouth first, then you both started in with hands, some mutual scissoring going on, the pressure she uses just right, in all the right places, because, damn it, she knows you like nobody else.

 

This time, the two of you come together, burying your sounds in each other’s shoulders, her teeth buried in your shoulder, your whole bodies wet with sweat and natural lubrication and spit, and it’s the best thing you’ve felt in months.

 

“I want to stay. I want to help,” you say, voice hoarse and cracked, mouth tired but happy. You don’t know what you’ll do if she says no.

 

“So stay,” she says, and then she kisses you even more stupid than you were when you started.

 

You settle into a routine together, working out the kids, figuring out who needs to be where and when, and what they all require in order to be safe, healthy, and happy.

 

You need to take two cars to church every Sunday, due to the sheer size of your family, but you don’t care. Delia still plays the piano and you’ve agreed to sing in the choir, because, fuck it, why not? Delia’s there, might as well be with her. You’ve got a fist or two for any bigots that have anything to say about you or Delia. You’re there for her, not for anything or anyone else. The smile on her face is proof enough that you’re doing the right thing.

 

You spend Sunday evenings at your folks house, sharing the supper table because your mama still cooks like she’s feeding an army and, well, you and Delia have an army to feed. Problem, meet solution.

 

The rest of the week, you spend the evenings listening to the radio, the music squeezing your heart a bit when it’s the classics and making you see a little red when you hear the new stuff that just doesn’t have the heart that the old stuff was steeped in. That you thought you took with you when you went to Nashville but it never connected with anyone there that mattered. It makes your heart feel bruised and tender.

 

It doesn’t matter anymore, because you aren’t looking for that life, but it doesn’t mean you can’t talk it through with Delia as you sip coffee on the back porch, watching the kids run around the yard, their faces showing just how happy they are to be there with you and her.

 

You know exactly how they feel.

 

It is what it is. It’s taken a long time to realize that life is just that simple. It might not be the dream you thought you wanted, that’s a long time gone at this point, but it’s still a dream. Delia’s dream.

 

You realize you might not be the star of the story after all, that you just might be a supporting character in someone else’s epic, and that’s okay.

 

You can accept that as long as you can keep sipping your coffee with Delia, holding her hand, and letting her know how much you love her. Because you do.


End file.
